General Clevery kicked Rogue in the side. She was on the cement
floor, tranquilizer dart in her arm, glaring up at him but helpless. A
shiner was forming over her eye and the blood from her nose and mouth slid
down under her chin and dripped onto the ground. Her wrist was unnaturally
bent, and her entire body lay sprawled. Gambit was a few yards away, so
pumped full of darts he could barely breathe, much less attempt to help
her. A soldier with a MP5 spoke.
"We sure tore them to pieces. Look at that one; it's a miracle he's even alive." He added a profane comment, and the other soldiers laughed until Clevery gave them a perfected glare. When the General gave that look, he meant business.
"You didn't do anything, soldier. The cyborgs did all the work, and a good job of it. Would someone give my congratulations to the technicians? The stun program worked perfectly." He looked at Rogue again. She narrowed her eyes again. He leaned down and began to speak quietly to her. "You hear me, little lady? Your trouble hasn't even started yet. I'm giving you to Bruce; he'll know how to deal with little runts like you." Rogue could not even muster the strength to spit in his eye. He rose, giving his order as he left the room. His men cleared the way. "I want the man filled with adrenaline. He needs to have an antidote to all those tranks. Then you can give them to Bruce; tell him to do whatever he wants to them. Move out!"
Rogue saw one man come forward with his rifle raised. She saw his boots, combat boots, come down on the floor in front of her, one shoelace untied. She saw a dog-tag, Lewis, swinging around his muscular wrist. She tried to move.
"I don't think so, little girl." The rifle butt came down and Rogue saw only darkness.
"Liar." SheCat held the phone tensely as she was suddenly woken up, as if she'd stuck her finger in an electric socket. Static began to ring in her ears. Remy couldn't be captured; he was too good at everything. And why were they calling her? She could never do anything right anyway. Last time she had tried, before she had quit the X-Men team, she had nearly gotten killed, had been used as bait, she had lost her heart, and, she hated to admit, her mother. So why was this stranger calling her to help them out?
"Believe me; I wouldn't lie of matters like this. Nightcrawler and I are coming your way in the Nightingale. Strobe and Aqua are in Nevada attacking the base Rogue and Gambit are currently held in. We're picking you up and taking you there. We should be there in less than an hour. Be ready."
"Right." SheCat waited for Lexi to brief her, then hung up. Donning a red and yellow t-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, she was suddenly reminded of her old uniform. Touching her sword at its hilt, her chest gave a pang of involuntary fire. Dismissing it to the back of her mind, she took up her sword and a box of toothpicks, needles, nails and medical syringes. Pausing a second, she looked in her cabinet, pulled out a plumeria pendant of mica and abalone, long since fixed, and hung it around her neck. She was not Yuriko, but she may need her.
It's my chance to do something right. I finally get a chance to do something right. Thoughts, surprisingly clear, ran through her mind. And this time, I will get it right, because Remy's life may be hanging in the balance.
I'm coming, Remy. You wait up for me.
Remy was in a dank little cell, curled up in the corner assessing his wounds and trying to block his ears to Rogue's yelps. They had beat him, too, and undoubtedly he had screamed a few times, but that pain was nothing against his frustration. He looked out the peep-hole in the door, saw the metal billy-club slam Rogue in the ribs, and turned away. His throat was too sore to scream for her anymore. The billy-club came down again, to the sound of metal striking bone. Rogue cried out again.
After another five minutes or so of this inhumane torture, the guards grew tired of pulverizing the young woman and shoved her back in the cell. Before they closed the door, they cut her bonds on her wrists and ankles. She crawled haphazardly to Remy.
"You okay?" His voice was hoarse from yelling. She curled up against him, feeling him wince slightly as she put pressure on his side. A rib was broken there.
"They can torture us all they want, it won't make a difference. We still got each other." False hope for them. They didn't know how long the head guard Bruce would toy with them, but they wanted to make use of every second.
"We'll die of starvation in here." Rogue couldn't believe he said that. Remy adjusted his position, carefully cradling his side. He had a cut over his eyebrow that had recently swollen. He was hurting more than she had thought. "Or dey'll kill us."
"Don't say that. Ah'm usually the one who runs outta hope." Rogue snuggled up against his good side against the cold. They needed a blanket, or something warm, or at least some water.
"Right den. We'll get out again. Or Strobe will find a way t' save us." More false hope. Remy took off his trenchcoat, gingerly, and used it to cover both of them. It wasn't warm, but it was something. Rogue gasped slightly as he sidled up next to her and her bruised ribs. Despite the healing factor she had imprinted from Logan, they had beat her hard, and she couldn't control when the healing factor activated. Most of her hurts were less than half healed. Remy wiped a trace of blood from beneath her nose. For a few seconds they sat, shivering, in silence.
"D'ya think they'll remember us?" Rogue pushed her hair out of her eyes. Her shiner was clearly visible, even in the dim light from the hall.
"Probably. Who'd forget us?" With Remy's trenchcoat off, Rogue had had a good view of his arms and neck. They were bruised and bloody, and four pockmarks dotted one side of his neck where the darts had gone in.
"What'll they remember us as? Just some more mutants trying to save our world? Just two more long dead superheroes?" Rogue curled up closer to retain heat. For another few moments they waited in silence. Finally Remy answered her question.
"I t'ink dey'll remember us as two superheroes who fell in love. You, de most beautiful, carin', lovely girl I ever met. You'll be just like you are now, mon chere, just as wonderful as you are now." After that somewhat sappy speech, he piped down, rubbing his sore throat.
"Yeah, sure." Rogue knew he was paying her a slew of compliments, and coming from him, heartfelt ones, but she had wanted something more realistic. Yes, he would remember her that way, but the others might not. Sensing her mood, Gambit leaned over and kissed her cheek. She smiled. "What'll they remember you as?"
"Well, dey'll remember me as I am. De most charmin', intelligent, handsome, strong and t'oughtful mutant who ever lived." He shot her his trademark grin, kind of lopsided but still attractive. She smirked.
"Don't ya get so cocky, you shampoo-addicted runt." The guards outside never understood why the occupants of the cell were laughing, despite the prospect of impending death.
"You're SheCat?" Lexi looked the Japanese woman up and down, clearly displeased. "Strobe puts all her trust in you?"
"Can we just get going? We've got a mission here." SheCat was not happy at all at the snooty woman in uniform who was standing on the driveway. Strobe actually worked with this social moron?
"Forgive me, but aren't you supposed to be in uniform?" Lexi took a more guarded position, arms crossed. SheCat stood there, in all her T- shirted, denim shorted, ponytailed glory.
"This is my uniform. Now, as before, let's go."
"You look like something Xavier scraped off the street."
"Yeah, like leather and Spandex hybrid is so intensely cool." SheCat snorted.
Lexi's eye twitched. She was not going to be pushed around by this trash. "At least I have a decent uniform."
"Dear God, let's just get going. I didn't wake up at one a.m. to be arguing about uniforms with someone like you."
When Assassin failed to respond, SheCat walked right by her and up the jet ramp. Lexi rolled her eyes and snorted. Irresponsible, irrespective wench.
Kurt was waiting in one of the bedrooms of the Nightingale, hanging from the ceiling by his tail. When SheCat entered, he neatly flipped down.
"Liebchen!"
"Kurt!"
After a short hug, the two sat down on the bed together. SheCat marveled at how Kurt had barely changed at all. Thinner, yes, after staying in Africa for a while, but still quite the same. Still quiet, gentle, caring Kurt.
"Why do you guys need me?" SheCat had to ask. Of anyone, why had Assassin called her specifically?
"Kurt paused a second, then choked on his words as he said them. "Rogue and Gambit have been.captured. Strobe placed her trust in you as a Plan B. Assassin called you because she knew that." He stared at her a second.
"But they're safe, right? Otherwise you would have called Scott or Jean or Logan, right?" The look in his eyes betrayed his answer before he even said it.
"Lexi made the call. I vas too weak after that long bamf, and Strobe and Aqua vere involved in something. She knew only of you, not of Jean or Scott or the others. Strobe trusts you, and made it known." His accent faintly flavored dead words. It was as if he was reciting something he had planned to say earlier, but not something he truly felt. "But Strobe didn't want you to come."
SheCat's answer was cold. Strobe had always thought this of her, never taken even a second to reconsider. "She thinks I'll die." Strobe might have been right.
They sat in silence for a few seconds, listened to the hum of the engines as Lexi piloted to Nevada. It was a soothing sound, reverberating inside their ribcages and altering the erratic beat of their hearts. They let their eyes close for a few seconds as the whirring, strumming sound moved into their mouths, noses, ears, and wrap them up. Meditation was a calming exercise.
"Will you?"
"Die, you mean?" SheCat kept her eyes closed. The longer she had her eyes closed, the longer she could be on a motorbike path among the aspens, wind twisting her hair and rain soaking her skin, collecting on her eyelashes and spilling alongside her tears. The longer she had them closed, the longer she could be anywhere but on this jet, knowing inside Remy was in danger hundreds of miles away.
"Ja. Will you?" Kurt watched her. He had not seen her for so long. She had grown up; she was no longer a girl. Strange how life changed people from innocent, naïve, happy children to broken shells of former spirit. All her love had been siphoned to everyone else, especially Gambit. There was no love left for herself, no confidence, no self-respect or reverence. She never took the time for herself, just moving from day to day, living for the sake of others. She was hollow.
"If I have to." Her eyes opened, slightly wetted. She turned to him.
He ran his fingers across her cheek, and with a pang was reminded of that time in the hallway a long time ago. Different setting, different people, same everything else. "I swear it von't come to that."
The jailors had decided that the Super-bowl had obviously gone to the Packers, and since that wasn't their favorite team, they were hard-pressed for entertainment. Bruce had been displeased by the previous session, so they decided to regain the favoritism and give an particularly brutal extra session. Both prisoners shivered in anticipation as the door opened.
"You know the drill. On your knees." As the Southern girl refused to do anything but stand, they hit Remy with the club between the shoulders, knocking him to the floor. Rogue, unwilling to be the cause of his pain, kneeled. Their captors bound her wrists and ankles, then Remy's. She staggered out of the cell as quickly as a bound person could as they prodded her in the back.
"If you weren't muties I might feel sorry for you. Too bad your 'evolutionary advantage' is useless now." One of the soldiers took the metal billy-club and slammed it into Rogue's spine. She crashed down on her stomach. He beat her again, this time against the head, and watched as she bared reddened teeth as a cut on her forehead leaked blood against the cement. The soldier raised the billy-club again.
"Get away from her!" Remy suddenly lunged, as best he could, at the club-bearing man, but fell short and only crashed to the floor at his feet. The other soldier kicked him as he struggled to get up.
"Well, well. We see a little spunk in this one. C'mon, boys, let's beat it out of him!" The two other soldiers rammed their clubs into Remy's side, forcing him to lie down. He gasped for breath. Rogue, still lying prone, was helpless to aid him. Metal struck bone and he cried out as his femur splintered. Rogue winced as the meaty thuds of the clubs striking flesh resonated in the room. Another series of blows, and the soldiers backed off a second.
Gambit lay there, keeping his teeth clenched to prevent the blood and bile from pouring out onto the floor. He could only see through one eye, and the other was hazy, swimming, unable to focus. A small rivulet of red ran down his face; his side felt like it had caved into itself. His chest moved painfully in and out with each breath. Shameful tears ran down his cheeks. He gulped. Rogue tried to move to him, but a soldier placed a foot on her back to keep her down. The initiator looked down his nose at Gambit.
"Surrender now, mutie?"
Through his tears, Remy painfully nodded his head.
"Do you know where we're going?" SheCat walked up besides Assassin in the pilot's chair of the cockpit.
"Don't doubt me, dropout. I know where we're going." Assassin watched the reflection off the face of her watch. SheCat's peeved expression at the name could easily be viewed, even without turning around. After a long an uncomfortable silence, Lexi finally felt the urge to drive the wedge home. "SheCat, eh?"
"Yeah." SheCat kept her eyes on the radar monitor, watching the sweeper move around and around, detecting nothing.
"Where'd you get a name like that?" Lexi adjusted her position to see her mental adversary better in her watch's reflection.
"That'd be none of your business now, would it?"
"Fine. Where'd you get the scars, then?" Lexi smiled privately to herself. Lexi 1, SheCat 0.
SheCat bristled. What had started out an uncomfortable dislike was rapidly heading towards full-blown loathing. "You're a sociopath, you know that?" The Japanese lady took the copilot's seat, marveling at the surprising comfort of the chair. Lexi sneered.
"So are you." Lexi adamantly kept her face to the window, piloting with ease and experience. She needed no copilot.
"Then I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The statement was more insulting and sarcastic than genuine. Lexi turned away. SheCat had gained the last word. Lexi didn't enjoy that at all. For a second both sat in silence, one reveling in her personal victory, the other privately sulking.
"Where's Nightcrawler?" Lexi broke the silence. SheCat preferred not to look at her as she answered.
"He's in back. He feels guilty he left the other two behind, so I figure we should let him rest a bit." Assassin didn't understand why. He had done what he had to. No sense risking his life for something unnecessary. After another somewhat uncomfortable silence, Lexi turned on her comm-link.
"Assassin to Strobe, we are currently fifteen minutes away from landing."
"Why'd you leave? We need you here!" The voice went in and out of static, but the angry tone was not lost.
"Apparently I was under the impression that your friend SheCat might actually be useful to us."
Strobe's following swear words were mainly lost to static. It sounded as if she was speaking with a mouth of sand. Finally she reverted to a more civil tongue. Over the comm-link the sound of gunshots were heard.
"Assassin, I told you to always consult me before you do anything! You brought her here? I told you to keep her out of this!"
"And what? We needed a buffer! Can't you see I did what I thought best?" Lexi had acted with good intention. She could just as easily have left them there and forgotten all about them.
"Take her back now!" Strobe menacing voice was interrupted by the sound of an explosion. SheCat grabbed Assassin's comm-link.
"SheCat to Strobe, I'm not going back. You can't make me." Silence on the other end, punctuated by short spurts of static. Assassin and SheCat exchanged looks. Lexi took the comm-link back.
"Strobe? Strobe, are you there?" Silence for another few seconds, then Katy-Jo's voice broke the tension.
"SheCat, don't do this. He can take care of himself." The background din had died away. Strobe was soft and gentle.
"I have to." SheCat had taken the comm-link away from Assassin again. Lexi let SheCat speak, then scrabbled at her hands with her nails to get it back, eventually wrenching it away.
"Assassin to Strobe, we will arrive in ten minutes. What's your situation?"
"Firefight, not so bad now. We can't get in yet. We'll wait. Strobe out."
"Assassin out."
Lexi clicked off her comm-link.
Remy and Rogue lay huddled up in the corner of their cell. Rogue was anxious, and kept checking on Remy, who had not spoken in hours. They had literally thrown them back into the cell, and they both had to crawl to the trenchcoat, which had been left before the beating. Gambit had slept through the last few hours, Rogue gently checking his pulse sporadically and wiping blood off his face with a strip of her uniform.
"Oh, Remy, what'd they do to you?" His face twitched a little and he whimpered. The initial adrenalin rush was gone, and the pain came in torrents. Had it not been for Rogue's voice, he'd have likely lost his will to live. "You didn't hafta get in the way."
Softly, brokenly, as if he was holding back tears, "I know."
The sound of boots striking floor interrupted them. Rogue's head shot up, white streak flashing in the light of the hall. Remy turned his eyes upwards. The door to the cell opened.
"Oh God, not again." The soldiers filed in, just like before, and bound them, just like before. They seemed more agitated, though, and less careful in their binding. Rogue's questioning eyes met those of the soldier wrapping her wrists.
"I wouldn't want to be you, Missy." He hoisted her up to her feet and shoved her out the door, where she promptly toppled to the ground. Remy, leg broken, was unable to stand with feet bound, so Rogue aided him as they were prodded and pushed down the hall. The soldier, now behind her and out of sight, spoke again.
"Bruce is not in a good mood."
Katy-Jo and Aqua were taking a much deserved rest, kneeling behind a pine tree. The search crew after them would be there soon, and then they'd have to move again, so they savored this small moment of respite. Katy-Jo began strapping, buckling, and hitching metal bracelets to her wrists, nervously fumbling her fingers across their smooth surfaces. Catching her utility belt as it began to slip off her knees and onto the ground, Aqua gave a questioning look.
"Conductors. They'll focus my power from stun to knockout." The last metal bracelet clashed against her wrist, shimmering in the dim light of dawn. Knockout and maybe even more, she thought. She had yet to kill, or even to experiment with the full extent of her mutation. Electricity was a dangerous creation to toy with.
The low hum of the Nightingale's twin engines broke the silence. The landing, despite Assassin's practiced attempt, was still clumsy among the trees. Kurt bamfed outside to meet the two as the ramp lowered.
"Guten Morgen." His voice was more wry than welcoming. "Any new developments?"
"None. We been too busy running our butts off avoiding some uniformed mooks to try and infiltrate." Strobe disregarded any form of greeting whatsoever.
"Yeah, and pine needles are the last thing you need when wearing a Spandex suit." Aqua pulled a needle from his thigh, sighing as it left a pockmark in the black fabric.
"Yeah, well, we now have the element of surprise." SheCat walked down the ramp, preceded by Lexi. Strobe looked once more into familiar hued eyes, a recognized face framed by a ponytail and stray lock of dark hair that had never been cut. It was the last face she wanted to see right now.
Lexi broke the tension. "Well, a thanks for bringing help would be nice."
"Assassin, you hijacked the jet, made calls without my permission, picked up my friend against my command and you expect me to be happy?" Strobe rose from her knees to look Lexi in the eye. "I'm the team leader! What I say goes! And I said to take her back home!"
"I think if a team leader thinks with their heart rather than their head they will do what's worst for all of us, despite good intentions." Alexis Moore didn't even blink.
"Assassin, if I didn't need you so much I'd have canned you on the spot." Katy-Jo turned away, fuming. She didn't notice as SheCat levitated her sword, held her index fingers to her temples and concentrated, nor did she notice that the sabre was glowing white hot. She did, however, notice that some of the pine needles and broken sticks began skittering across the duff at her feet.
"SheCat, what are you doing?" Katy-Jo turned to see SheCat, palms open-faced, surrounded by a myriad collection of toothpicks, syringes, nails, pine needles and other various sharp objects. The sword cleaved the air as it returned to SheCat's hand.
"Getting ready. Now, are we gonna do this or what?" SheCat peeked her head around a tree, followed by her personal collection of random sharp items.
"SheCat." Strobe let her voice wander away. The other four watched her as they awaited her response. "Fine. Let's go."
Rogue and Gambit were shunted and shoved down the halls of the complex, moved quickly and with great haste. Because Remy couldn't walk well on a broken leg and two shattered ribs, Rogue had to help support him as they went, a task that was quickly wearing her down. It was near the end of the hall that she realized that he suddenly was light, and her wounds were healed. Quickly adjusting her position to avoid skin contact, she focused hyper-keen senses, imprinted from Logan, and tuned in to the halls alongside them.
"The dampener's down! We don't get it running again those muties could get lose!" Despite heightened hearing, the voices were still faint. "Do you know the damage they can cause?"
"Hang up.energy is coming back, sixty percent recharged.there's too much electrical interference. Some kind of electric anomaly." A calmer voice, an older one. The other one ranted and raved. This one was more of a scientist. Rogue felt obliged to grin. Good old Strobe.
"We can't wait half an hour for it to work again! The boss will have our heads!"
"We'll have to!"
"How bad is it?"
"They would currently have full access to their mutations."
"Sir!" A new voice, younger, more like that of a low-ranking recruit. "We think it will be possible to set their mutation to a less intense level if we use the generator!"
"How long?"
"Five minutes to get it going, lessens their mutation to forty percent of its original."
"Do it."
Five minutes. They had five minutes to create as much chaos as they could in the confined space and hopefully escape intact. Then, with powers nullified, it would be slaughter for them, the soldiers all having guns. She looked at Remy. Apparently he had noticed his power had returned as his eyes began to glow a vivid crimson. The slightest nod from her head, a twitch of his sparking fingers against the bindings, and mayhem unleashed itself, in all its horrible glory, inside that cement hall.
"Aqua and I'll stick together. Kurt, Assassin and SheCat, your job is finding the other two. Aqua and I'll try to reach the control room. Until then, all cyborgs consider you fair game, so be careful. On the count of three, Kurt takes me and Aqua in and returns for the other two. Ready?" Slow nods from everyone. Strobe took a deep breath in her counting. "One.two.three. Now." Kurt wrapped himself around her and Aqua, then disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. Assassin sniffed a little as the smell of sulfur perforated the air. SheCat paid it no heed, waiting patiently until Kurt returned and gave her and Lexi what reminded her of a hug.
The jaunt itself was not as unpleasant as the landing. Kurt, trained by years of practice, never even felt the vertigo settle in. It happened to fast for most people to even notice the sudden flip-flopping of their stomachs. Still, on occasion, someone would not recover fast enough and be left nauseous or even vomiting. Since his early years of bamfing it had always been an embarrassing part of his actions that many people found the trip quite unpleasant.
They landed, however, in a sprawl. Kurt's slight miscalculation left them a foot above ground, bringing their ankles to a very hard awakening. Strobe and Aqua waited for them. Strobe whispered as quietly as she could while still being audible.
"Best of luck to you. If anything goes wrong, use the comm-links. Be careful." And with that she and Aqua disappeared into the shadows of the hall, carefully using a form of spray to high-light tripwire detectors. Kurt gave an unseen nod and started in the opposite direction, followed by the two women. He moved like a shadow, dark fur blending perfectly with the shadows. The window did not supply the sunlight to light up the room. They reached a door, Lexi sprayed something on it, and they entered once it was assured the handle was safe. Kurt's pointy-eared head peered around the door.
The room was made of cement, like everything else in the building. The sunlight came from a small window and illuminated the grey surface of the right wall. The rest was fairly dark. Lexi dared to use a flashlight across the floor.
Shining silver against the light, three metal billy-clubs rested against the wall. A few telltale spatters of blood on the ground stated that this was a room of torture. Assassin ran her hands over the stained floor.
"They were here. Both of them. There's small amounts of blood, cut leather bindings, a scrap of red uniform over here." Her trained eye caught every minute detail. "Their cell would be this door, and they recently left, by the trail of dirt and blood, from this door."
Silent nods from the rest. Kurt followed the door Lexi had indicated, and found himself in a hall of some kind. The two ladies filed out after him, and Lexi switched off her light, leaving them in an unlit, windowless room. From the darkness, a distant scream was heard.
In the manner of time it had taken the soldiers to react, all the bindings had been cut and Gambit and Rogue were creating a good deal of chaos in the hallway. The first few soldiers fell to Rogue's massive strength, and the series behind them taken out by the charged remnants of the leather bindings. Realizing that close quarters would benefit them more than long-range, the two used the walls to their advantage, Rogue using it as a weapon as she smashed heads and bodies against it, Gambit using it as cover as he used any small object he could lay his hands on to rain pain and energy upon his foes. The soldiers attempted to back off to get a good shot, but it was more than difficult in their confined surroundings.
Two minutes in, neither had tired. Gambit grabbed a dog-tag from a soldier's neck, charged until it glowed with fierce violet energy, then flung it, watching as it wreaked havoc upon on side of the hall. Rogue used her ability of flight to throw comrades onto each other, playing a crude game of human bowling. Three minutes. Gambit grabbed a soldiers gun, fired twice, then charged it and threw as hard as he could. Even broken and bloodied, he was not beaten yet. Neither was Rogue. Using her strength inherited from Carol Danvers, her feet lashed out and cracked skulls against cement. The wall itself was breaking as all manner of objects slammed into it. It was all or nothing, and neither of them held back. Four minutes.
Their sudden drop in power came so fast that Rogue nearly fell from the ceiling, slowing herself only with the remnants of Ms. Marvel's power. As she caught herself, she allowed herself as a target, if only for a second. It was a second too much. Ten guns fired almost simultaneously.
The slugs of ammunition pounded through her chest, going in neat circles and exiting horribly maimed holes. She dropped.
For Remy, it moved in incredibly slow motion. For some perverse reason, they didn't fire at him, not as he rushed to her side and lifted her from the ground, not as he felt her go limp in his arms.
Her eyes rolled up to meet his. Her mouth started to form words, but only a bubble of blood came out. Logan's healing factor would never be enough to heal this kind of damage. Again, she attempted speech.
"Remy.?" She tried to focus. She couldn't see him. Strange, how at her point of death the one thing she wanted was denied from her. Unfair, if anything.
"Rogue." It was within that one word that all the emotions that could be contained in any speech or any soliloquy were presented. He held her tight, feeling her broken body suddenly heavy in his arms. She didn't respond. Then, instinct took over, and he grabbed her and kissed.
If she could use his life force to benefit herself, it would all be worth it. If her life meant giving her all of his, he would do it. But she was not going to die here, not now, not if he could do anything to stop it. Even at forty percent of her original power, skin to skin contact would be enough to siphon all his strength off. But Remy wouldn't go unconscious first. At forty percent, he would be awake for the whole thing.
It started instantly, the second their lips touched, while she was dying but not yet dead. The first sense was overwhelming pain. Every nerve screamed and twisted in agony as his flesh met hers. Her eyes opened a second, unseen to him, glowing red and black like some visual parody of Hell. He felt the blood rising in both their mouths, touching and bubbling and spilling between the smallest crevice of their lips. His eyes closed, now going pale, at the same time as all of her conscious thought shut down.
`Oh God I'm gonna lose her. I can't hold on anymore. But the truth was, he couldn't let go. Whether by his force of will or by the activation of her powers, he couldn't let go. He couldn't even move as they collapsed, still locked, and hit the floor. He had no healing factor, his life force wouldn't be enough to sustain her. The blood started to migrate in his veins towards his lips, and for a second he felt like giggling as every pleasure center in his brain caught fire and erased logical reasoning. Then that wave passed too, and left him feeling pain yet again. Please, if you can hear my t'oughts as dey come to you.could she hear him? Did it matter what he thought anymore anyway? If it did matter, if that was what she would have of him, then he wanted it to be what he wanted to say. It was magic, chere. Just like magic. C'mon, girl, pull through. Don' die on me. You aint goin' out dis easy. If his life revitalized her, then at least he would live forever in her soul. If she died, she would become nothing more than a memory.
At that point cognizant thought became impossible as bloodlines ruptured, as arteries started to burst and veins bleed out. This was the final stand. The damage was done. Either way, whether she lived or died, his fate was sealed. Blood started to pour from his nose, his ears, his eyes --what kind of internal damage had been done to make him bleed from his eyes?--like some satanic form of tears mingling with his real ones. Skin lost color and touch died right there. He could have been stabbed and never even felt it. In almost all senses, he was already dead, and so was she. He was losing her. His last connected thought came clearly, despite all his bodily functions ceasing to exist, as his soul departed alongside hers.
I love you.
SheCat took off at a sprint, until Kurt grabbed her shoulder and restrained her.
"Nothing subtle about you, is there?" Lexi started creeping along the wall, bow and arrow ready for action. The other two followed, though Kurt kept having to hold SheCat back. Quite plainly she was nervous Remy and Rogue were in danger. And quite plainly she didn't understand why the others didn't want to run to them either. However, her habit was to throw safety to the wind, and that was not something the rest of the team was prepared to do.
"That might've been them! Why don't we go help them?!" She struggled to pass Nightcrawler again, who restrained her with his tail. After a brief try at wrenching it off from around her waist, she fell back against the wall in slight resignation, holding her sabre ready.
"Ve don't know it vas them." Kurt melded into the wall shadows. The sound of footsteps caught his attention. SheCat tried to move forward again.
"Shhh! Someone's there." Kurt held a hand over SheCat's mouth to prevent her answering. Lexi peered down the hall.
"No, Nightcrawler, not someone. Something." A stunted form was moving down the hall, followed by two others, similar to the first. The single glowing eye on each and the slight clicks of metal every time they put down their right feet gave their identity away. So these were the infamous cyborgs.
"Not for long." SheCat's voice was colder, more calculated even than Assassin's. Lifting a palm, the sword levitated, then shot like an arrow from a bow directly through the first cyborg. Before an alarm was even sounded, the second had been dispatched as well. The third was just quick enough to send out a series of sharp blips before a series of nails and medical syringes pounded straight through its torso. "I think that was the alarm!"
All three took off running, down the hall and as fast as they could. Kurt grabbed Lexi and bamfed to the end of the hall, then bamfed back to SheCat and grabbed her. His bamfing felt weaker, however, as if he was operating at less than half of his potential. Likewise, at her full extent, SheCat could have obliterated all three cyborgs simultaneously. But at forty percent, it was too late for that.
"Left! Go left!" SheCat barked an order as the came to a three-way fork. Go towards where they had heard the scream. If they found help, that was useful. If not, they'd be further wedged between a rock and a tight space.
"Well now that they know where we're headed!" Alexis sprinted at full speed left, placing a bare hand on her arrow. Her power, derived of instantaneous canceling of the electrons in an object that allowed it to phase through the first object it hit, was taking longer to activate. Frustrated, she tried another arrow, also in vain. An entire dictionary of profane words seemed to roll off her lips as she tried yet another arrow. Nothing.
In a similar fashion, the series of sharp items following SheCat dropped almost instantly, clattering with the clicks and clangs of wood and metal against the cement. The sword hovered a second longer than the rest, then crashed down too. SheCat dropped to her knees and grabbed it and a handful of toothpicks, ignoring the blood now running from her hand, and sprinted after Kurt, who was in a similar state of confusion as a puff or purple smoke left him standing in exactly the same place as he was before. Lexi turned an about face to see them.
"They've switched off our power!" Lexi waited for them at another fork, catching her breath on her tongue as she panted.
"No duh, Sherlock, now let's keep going! Straight! Go straight!" A bullet tore into the wall next to SheCat's head. A hefty amount of curses escaped her mouth as she ducked into the shadows. Kurt's fur let him meld into the shade, and he used it to his advantage as he dropped to all fours and ran headlong straight, following Assassin.
"Fork!" Lexi called out again to warn them, then gave a sharp cry as a tranquilizer ripped into her side. She twisted a bit as she fell, then twitched as she hit the floor.
"Grab her!" SheCat had adjusted to the leadership mode very quickly. Kurt grabbed Lexi. SheCat lowered her voice as much as she could while still being audible. "Go right. I'll take left. Bottom line, no matter what happens to me, get out of here and to the jet, take care of her, and call Strobe." With that, she shoved him to the right, making sure that he stayed in shadows. He turned to her as if to protest. She lifted her sword to his throat.
"Don't make me hurt you." With that, she shoulder-checked him right again and started running left, crying out as if she'd been hit. "Aaugh! My leg! I've been shot!" Kurt didn't miss the wink she gave him. He took the limp form of Lexi in his arms and started to creep down the hallway on the right, mentally figuring the easiest way out of there.
SheCat staggered a few steps, then leaned against a wall and clutched her leg as she was surrounded by armed soldiers. A few of them started speculating; she didn't look injured. She heard one in particular.
"Wait! She's not hit!"
"Too bad for you, moron." With that she sprung at them, using her skill in fencing and martial arts to plow through the first two before taking a dart to the neck. Her sword impaled one more before the dart took its paralyzing effect. Lying prone on the ground, the only intense part of her was her eyes, shining green and gold and burning the viewers with utter hatred.
"Well then, I bet you came for the other two. Funny, you don't look like a part of their team. What are they again, the X-Men? You don't look like one." The soldier standing over her looked down at her helpless body. Strange, if he could have given her a name at the moment he would have had her some type of wildcat. He could not know that he would have been invariably correct. "Do you like to lose?"
She didn't answer. He continued.
"If you let those eyes of your roam a little down the hall, you'll see what I mean." She did.
It wasn't as if her world crashed down around her ears. It was more that it ceased to exist as the world was bathed in darkness, as it went mute, as it softened out. She could have been dead had it not been for the rising and falling of her chest, still panting from the running. Anyone watching her eyes would have said that they had lost all pigment, all shine. It was as if her soul had died right then and there, at the sight of the person she loved most lying dead.
"It hurts, don't it? I had a loved one once too, until you mutie freaks took her away. You took my Loraine away." He ripped her face away from his and watched as her head cracked against the floor. He stood up and gave his orders. "Take her to a cell, give her food and water and bring her to me for her beatings. Clean up that mess down the hall, but keep the prisoners' bodies. There's more than one way to break a person."
Strobe and Aqua had reached the room past the cyborg barracks unharmed when their powers had been negated. Both took it as a hindrance, but nothing more. Strobe had the odd feeling something was amiss, something she should have done lay untouched. Nibbling her nails as she decided which door to take, she was irritating Aqua. However, he bore his annoyance silently.
"Ah, I think this door, if I remember the map correctly." Her voice, despite being no more than a whisper, echoed in the hall. At that moment her comm-link blipped.
"Nightcrawler to Strobe, Assassin and I are outside ze building. She's been hit with some kind of paralyzing dart. We're at the Nightingale now."
"And where's SheCat?" Strobe was getting nervous. She should have gone with her, tried to hold back her friend's impulses and emotional instincts.
"I don't know. She forced us to leave without her." Kurt's voice seemed a bit sad, as if he should have taken her place as decoy.
"Thank you, Nightcrawler. Strobe out."
"Nightcrawler out." Both links clicked off. Aqua gave Katy-Jo a questioning look.
"What now?" Strobe looked back at him, filled with hindsight. But the team had to persevere, no matter what. She'd gotten them into a mess, now it was her duty to get them out.
"We find the control room. We shut it down. We get back to the Nightingale. Either SheCat finds Rogue and Gambit and frees them, or she doesn't. If she does, we all go home safe. If not, we wait as long as we can. Until it's obvious if they aren't coming back."
They had thrown her in a cell. Literally, thrown her. She didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. There was no purpose to her very existence anymore.
Of course there's a purpose. She sat in the corner, rubbing and fingering her flower pendant again and again, as if it could give her solace. As if Yuriko could tell her what to do, where to go, what happened next. As if Yuriko could talk to her only daughter through the use of a mica and abalone pendant.
There were no tears shed. Tears were petty things, they were overused, they were of no significance anymore. Tears would make heartache the equivalent of murder.
She knew two things. The first, the love of her life was gone for good. The second? She didn't want to live in a world devoid of the joy she was given from his very presence.
You can die now, dear. It's okay. Pale green eyes turned to the window. The sun had risen. It burned her eyes, blinded them, even when she couldn't care less anyway. She was blind already, deaf too. Every sense had failed her, just like she had always failed the team. Bait once, now a liability. Unable to help when her loved one needed her.
Shhh, dear. It's okay now. You'll be fine. Don't think such horrible things. You got Kurt and Lexi out, didn't you? And at least that's something.
What does it really matter? Remy's dead. I couldn't help him.
It was out of your hands, dear. You can't blame yourself. Who was she talking to? Was someone talking to her? A telepath, perhaps? Someone else? Or was it all in her head?
It had always been all in her head. Any notion he had loved her back, any display she took as affection, any thought that she could actually help anyone. Yes, he might have enjoyed her presence, he might have protected her, but he always had looked after her like a daughter or sister. His real love had been for Rogue.
Rogue. Rogue had had everything SheCat had ever wanted. Rogue had always had Remy.
Come to think of it, Remy was the only thing SheCat had ever wanted.
Rogue had gotten to die in his arms, hear his last words, feel his last motion, his last thought. She'd gotten to have everything from him a pair of doomed lovers could ever need. She'd had every chance, every opportunity SheCat had never had. But SheCat had one thing Rogue didn't have.
SheCat had a chance for revenge.
That's it, dear. Just like that. You can die now.
I'm already dead.
Shhhh.
"Oh God, it was the wrong hallway." Katy-Jo had had a sudden recollection. She had gone down the way. They were one the wrong side of the complex.
"Well, things just keep going from bad to worse, don't they?" Aqua peeked around a corner to ensure that no one was lying in wait for them, realizing it was futile unless the enemy was deaf.
"Okay, we head for the other side. If we find the dampener all the better, 'cause we can blast it. I guess we're on our own." Strobe walked around the corner. Aqua followed at a more tentative pace, careful to make sure his footsteps made no noise. Strobe glared at him.
"Stop it, it's not like we could be in any worse trouble." She was impatient, snappy, and above all, putting herself and others in danger when she knew she should be doing otherwise. Aqua grabbed her arm.
"Katherine Joanne Joplen, in all my years knowing you I never knew you to be careless." Their eyes met, and their unspoken bond touched them both again. She answered, softly.
"Right. Okay, we'll try this way. And Aqua?" He let go of her arm. "Your footsteps are too loud. Be more stealthy, like this." He suppressed a smile as they continued down the hall, now almost silent.
Around five minutes later, they found the dampener, used some mismatched fighting skills to dispatch of the guards, and used a mixture of brute force and mechanical know-how to disable it. Once her power was returned, Strobe proceeded to drain all the electricity in each room unto herself and store it. She flicked a spark between her fingers as Aqua bound and gagged the unconscious guards.
"Looking up, Aqua?" She leaned casually against the wall as he used duct tape to seal a handkerchief in the mouth of a guard.
"We could've been master spies, Katy-Jo." He shot her a smile that should have been on a toothpaste ad. "Amazing how quickly our luck turned."
Her smile faded. "We still have the control room to do. And we have to find the others." Their happiness was indeed short-lived. With a sharp pang both recalled that the others were not having it so easy as them. Aqua stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You're doing fine. We'll get 'em back." Her hand clasped his. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that her plan had been perfect, that she was a good leader.
"I'm just worried, that's all." She couldn't force her eyes to meet his.
"So am I. But we'll get through this."
"Promise?" Her one moment of weakness was unseen by any but him. So long she had kept up the pretense of a fearless leader, of a perfect role model that sometimes she forgot what it was like to be wrong.
"I promise."
She took his hand from her shoulder and turned to face the hallway, letting the electricity she felt inside run through her veins. "Let's go."
Arnold Lewis had often questioned what he was doing at S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd never liked mutants, but he didn't hate them either. Many times he'd secretly fed the prisoners when his comrades were not looking. He knew, unlike his teammates, that mutants too could feel pain and love and emotion.
So why had he taken the job? Easy. It was a way to pay the rent for his three kids and wife at home.
And yet, whenever he saw something so ultimately human coming from one of his victims, he never slept. He knew he'd be re-playing the scene of the white-streaked woman's and red-eyed man's death for weeks. It would keep him every night, and he would wonder why there even was a difference between the mutants and the humans.
He had seen some of the most inhumane treatment towards the captives. The General planned on using the body of the red-eyed man to torture the new captive, the Japanese girl. Lewis was appalled. Yes, the General had his reasons, but even then, why was that girl going to be punished so, just for trying to help someone?
When he was little, his father had told him stories of the Nazis in World War II. Even the people who weren't Jewish were killed, he said, just because they felt it would be unethical not to step in and help. Lewis often wondered if he was being ethical, standing aside as people as human as he was were killed and maimed when he could step in and help them.
Unfortunately, "human" is filled with faults, and as much anger and rage as love and hope can be unleashed from the human soul. It was the last lesson Lewis ever learned.
SheCat stood alone in the room where the soldiers had tried to take her to her first torture session. The soldiers' blood wetted buck knives hovered in the air around her. Lewis, jugular cut, lay at her feet. Her pale eyes looked out the open door. The buck knives followed her.
Before anyone could even raise the alarm, they were dead. No one saw or heard her coming until it was too late for them. As more sharp objects accumulated in her aura, she walked in a kind of diabolic serenity down each hall, killing everything that moved. She slaughtered the men playing Go Fish and drinking coffee, she decimated the technicians watching Gary the Rat and Stripper Ella on the control panels.
She wasn't SheCat anymore. She wasn't Yuriko, either. She was nobody of importance.
Leaving a wake of destruction behind as she scoured the entire complex, she never felt a thing. No pain, no guilt, no anger, no grief. She couldn't feel anything at all. There was nothing left to feel. She was a berserker. She was a walking dead person.
Strange how easily one could tip the hand of fate. She had had hope, hope that Remy would someday love her, hope that someday she would do something right, hope that she would someday get over him. Now those last rays of hope had been crushed by the will of S.H.I.E.L.D., covered up by the clouds of brutality and fear. Clouds that had left their mark as pale eyes, as blood all over the floor, as a trail of destruction that followed a broken heart.
Hell hath no fury like a lover denied.
Strange how a young woman, slightly depressed, had metamorphosed into a blood-thirsty killer. She walked differently as well, with a perfected stalk instead of a slight shuffle. Her face betrayed no emotion; her actions were only to control the myriad sharp objects that followed her.
A trickle of blood ran from the mouth of a guard into his NEW DADDY mug. A technician, shock still frozen on her heavily make-upped face, would never return to the lover portrayed in her gold locket. A custodian was lying on the floor, his bare chest revealing the name STACY tattooed into his flesh, along side the thin cuts that ran in one side of his body and out the other. All were her prey. The full wrath of SheCat, daughter of Lady Deathstrike, had been unveiled.
"I think this is it." Strobe ran her hands over the panel in front of her, sensing the routes of the electricity moving throughout the entire building. "Yeah, this is it." They'd reached the control room.
"Why isn't anybody here?" Aqua checked around the panel. "Oh."
A body lay there in a puddle of blood. Aqua cringed and shrunk away from it. Strobe looked on in interest.
"Who did this?" Strobe checked around. No signs of a struggle, only the shocked face of the victim and a slit across their neck. Strobe investigated closer, wrinkling her nose at the smell of blood and the fly that currently went in and out of the victim's ear.
As if on cue, SheCat walked up into the doorway. Aqua backed up against the panel, making sure his hand was on the switch that would transfer energy to the dampener. His own power was useless for this situation. Strobe moved forward towards her friend, but stopped halfway across the room as she saw SheCat's eyes.
"Oh my God, SheCat, what happened to you? What did they do to you?" The blank face followed Strobe's action as she backed up next to Aqua. Something struggled in the back of the berserker's mind, some tie. She couldn't kill these two. They were important, in some way, somehow, they were important.
But killer instinct overrode all rational thought.
Fast as lighting her hand whipped out, and with equal speed the series of blades and shards of glass flew forward to meet their targets. Strobe screamed, but Aqua moved as fast as SheCat did, flicking the switch the instant her hand started to move. The weapons stopped a few inches short of each of their necks and fell. SheCat didn't respond.
"Oh my God." Katy-Jo was in a state of shock. She had never seen anyone this possessed, this broken. And she had an idea exactly what they had done to make her this way.
Aqua shrunk back under the glare of the woman. Her eye twitched. Aqua dared to move his hand off the dampener switch.
It was the opportunity SheCat was waiting for.
She launched herself like a rocket at him, using her own body weight as a tool to slam him against the panel and pin him there. He tried to push her off, but she had acquired some type of unholy strength. Quietly, in a perfected manner, she placed her hands on the side of his head, ready to twist for the killing blow.
For Strobe, it should have been an easy decision. A berserk killer or her lover. But it wasn't an easy decision. It was the hardest one of her life, and no matter which choice she made, she'd regret it for the rest of her mortal life.
That berserk killer had once been her friend.
"I'm sorry."
With those words, Katherine Joanne Joplen cut the dampener's energy and raised her hand.
* * *
Strobe dropped her hand. Tears began running down her face, over her perfect lower lashes and down her cheeks. The blonde hair that had previously been a luxury now fell awkwardly, amounting to even more accent her mood. She gave a small sob.
"Katy-Jo? Is she.did you.?"
"It's over." Strobe shut her eyes to all their human extent, trying to stem her crying in vain. She turned away from him.
Aqua pushed the body off him, feeling the tad of static electricity spark against his uniform. Standing up, he watched as the girl who could never be broken broke down into weeping. He walked over to comfort her.
"Katy-Jo? Katy-Jo? Let's go home." Still unable to look at him, she nodded. He took her by the shoulder and started walking out of the building. She stopped halfway out of the room.
"I don't want to be an X-Man anymore." As childish as that statement was, she meant it. She never wanted to have to use her control over electricity, to have to send friends to their death, to have to make choices like that ever again.
"C'mon, let's just go home." He started walking her away again. She complied.
The sun was at high noon when they made it outside.
SheCat was swimming in some kind of murky water, too dark to see through. There seemed to be no gravity, as she floated up and down in the darkness. She could feel her hair swirling around her face, feel the water entering her nose as she tried to breath. Struggling madly to reach some kind of surface, some slight respite from the ache in her lungs, she mentally cried out across the astral plane.
Hey! This isn't the way it was before! Again she thrashed in the water for oxygen, then slowly stopped. She was already dead. It didn't matter if she drown now or not.
What had happened? She remembered a cell, thinking to herself that she should die then and there, then the rest was hazy. Except the last scene had been, just for a second, crystal clear. Strobe softly whispering words and raising one hand while the other flicked a switch, and then blinding pain. Had Strobe killed her? Her little Strobey? Was that even possible?
From that moment on, SheCat could feel again. Every emotion that had previously been denied from her rushed in a torrent to consume her entire being. Grief, hate, fear, fury, all ran incognizant, one right after the other, beating her skull in with a type of mental breakdown that began to destroy here. She writhed and twisted, spread-eagled, fetal position, folded, any possible contortion as she screamed aloud, as if movement could acupuncture her feelings.
After a while that seemed like an eternity, she stopped, still unable to breathe in the dark liquid surrounding her. It was over. Wherever she was going now, she would go. It didn't matter to her.
A bright flash of light in the back of her eyes forced her to look upwards. There, as if a seem was splitting through black fabric, was a slit, now filled with blinding light. An arm came down to her, with gloves with half the fingers chopped off as it grabbed her wrist. For the first time in her life she felt the deepest peace anyone could feel as it pulled her up into the light.
I told you dat I'd be back soon, mon chere, an' it looks like I kept my word.
When she reached the surface, she found herself looking at a familiar smirk, familiar auburn hair that fell just over familiar eyes, a familiar laugh that she loved so much. SheCat was finally home.
"We sure tore them to pieces. Look at that one; it's a miracle he's even alive." He added a profane comment, and the other soldiers laughed until Clevery gave them a perfected glare. When the General gave that look, he meant business.
"You didn't do anything, soldier. The cyborgs did all the work, and a good job of it. Would someone give my congratulations to the technicians? The stun program worked perfectly." He looked at Rogue again. She narrowed her eyes again. He leaned down and began to speak quietly to her. "You hear me, little lady? Your trouble hasn't even started yet. I'm giving you to Bruce; he'll know how to deal with little runts like you." Rogue could not even muster the strength to spit in his eye. He rose, giving his order as he left the room. His men cleared the way. "I want the man filled with adrenaline. He needs to have an antidote to all those tranks. Then you can give them to Bruce; tell him to do whatever he wants to them. Move out!"
Rogue saw one man come forward with his rifle raised. She saw his boots, combat boots, come down on the floor in front of her, one shoelace untied. She saw a dog-tag, Lewis, swinging around his muscular wrist. She tried to move.
"I don't think so, little girl." The rifle butt came down and Rogue saw only darkness.
"Liar." SheCat held the phone tensely as she was suddenly woken up, as if she'd stuck her finger in an electric socket. Static began to ring in her ears. Remy couldn't be captured; he was too good at everything. And why were they calling her? She could never do anything right anyway. Last time she had tried, before she had quit the X-Men team, she had nearly gotten killed, had been used as bait, she had lost her heart, and, she hated to admit, her mother. So why was this stranger calling her to help them out?
"Believe me; I wouldn't lie of matters like this. Nightcrawler and I are coming your way in the Nightingale. Strobe and Aqua are in Nevada attacking the base Rogue and Gambit are currently held in. We're picking you up and taking you there. We should be there in less than an hour. Be ready."
"Right." SheCat waited for Lexi to brief her, then hung up. Donning a red and yellow t-shirt and a pair of denim shorts, she was suddenly reminded of her old uniform. Touching her sword at its hilt, her chest gave a pang of involuntary fire. Dismissing it to the back of her mind, she took up her sword and a box of toothpicks, needles, nails and medical syringes. Pausing a second, she looked in her cabinet, pulled out a plumeria pendant of mica and abalone, long since fixed, and hung it around her neck. She was not Yuriko, but she may need her.
It's my chance to do something right. I finally get a chance to do something right. Thoughts, surprisingly clear, ran through her mind. And this time, I will get it right, because Remy's life may be hanging in the balance.
I'm coming, Remy. You wait up for me.
Remy was in a dank little cell, curled up in the corner assessing his wounds and trying to block his ears to Rogue's yelps. They had beat him, too, and undoubtedly he had screamed a few times, but that pain was nothing against his frustration. He looked out the peep-hole in the door, saw the metal billy-club slam Rogue in the ribs, and turned away. His throat was too sore to scream for her anymore. The billy-club came down again, to the sound of metal striking bone. Rogue cried out again.
After another five minutes or so of this inhumane torture, the guards grew tired of pulverizing the young woman and shoved her back in the cell. Before they closed the door, they cut her bonds on her wrists and ankles. She crawled haphazardly to Remy.
"You okay?" His voice was hoarse from yelling. She curled up against him, feeling him wince slightly as she put pressure on his side. A rib was broken there.
"They can torture us all they want, it won't make a difference. We still got each other." False hope for them. They didn't know how long the head guard Bruce would toy with them, but they wanted to make use of every second.
"We'll die of starvation in here." Rogue couldn't believe he said that. Remy adjusted his position, carefully cradling his side. He had a cut over his eyebrow that had recently swollen. He was hurting more than she had thought. "Or dey'll kill us."
"Don't say that. Ah'm usually the one who runs outta hope." Rogue snuggled up against his good side against the cold. They needed a blanket, or something warm, or at least some water.
"Right den. We'll get out again. Or Strobe will find a way t' save us." More false hope. Remy took off his trenchcoat, gingerly, and used it to cover both of them. It wasn't warm, but it was something. Rogue gasped slightly as he sidled up next to her and her bruised ribs. Despite the healing factor she had imprinted from Logan, they had beat her hard, and she couldn't control when the healing factor activated. Most of her hurts were less than half healed. Remy wiped a trace of blood from beneath her nose. For a few seconds they sat, shivering, in silence.
"D'ya think they'll remember us?" Rogue pushed her hair out of her eyes. Her shiner was clearly visible, even in the dim light from the hall.
"Probably. Who'd forget us?" With Remy's trenchcoat off, Rogue had had a good view of his arms and neck. They were bruised and bloody, and four pockmarks dotted one side of his neck where the darts had gone in.
"What'll they remember us as? Just some more mutants trying to save our world? Just two more long dead superheroes?" Rogue curled up closer to retain heat. For another few moments they waited in silence. Finally Remy answered her question.
"I t'ink dey'll remember us as two superheroes who fell in love. You, de most beautiful, carin', lovely girl I ever met. You'll be just like you are now, mon chere, just as wonderful as you are now." After that somewhat sappy speech, he piped down, rubbing his sore throat.
"Yeah, sure." Rogue knew he was paying her a slew of compliments, and coming from him, heartfelt ones, but she had wanted something more realistic. Yes, he would remember her that way, but the others might not. Sensing her mood, Gambit leaned over and kissed her cheek. She smiled. "What'll they remember you as?"
"Well, dey'll remember me as I am. De most charmin', intelligent, handsome, strong and t'oughtful mutant who ever lived." He shot her his trademark grin, kind of lopsided but still attractive. She smirked.
"Don't ya get so cocky, you shampoo-addicted runt." The guards outside never understood why the occupants of the cell were laughing, despite the prospect of impending death.
"You're SheCat?" Lexi looked the Japanese woman up and down, clearly displeased. "Strobe puts all her trust in you?"
"Can we just get going? We've got a mission here." SheCat was not happy at all at the snooty woman in uniform who was standing on the driveway. Strobe actually worked with this social moron?
"Forgive me, but aren't you supposed to be in uniform?" Lexi took a more guarded position, arms crossed. SheCat stood there, in all her T- shirted, denim shorted, ponytailed glory.
"This is my uniform. Now, as before, let's go."
"You look like something Xavier scraped off the street."
"Yeah, like leather and Spandex hybrid is so intensely cool." SheCat snorted.
Lexi's eye twitched. She was not going to be pushed around by this trash. "At least I have a decent uniform."
"Dear God, let's just get going. I didn't wake up at one a.m. to be arguing about uniforms with someone like you."
When Assassin failed to respond, SheCat walked right by her and up the jet ramp. Lexi rolled her eyes and snorted. Irresponsible, irrespective wench.
Kurt was waiting in one of the bedrooms of the Nightingale, hanging from the ceiling by his tail. When SheCat entered, he neatly flipped down.
"Liebchen!"
"Kurt!"
After a short hug, the two sat down on the bed together. SheCat marveled at how Kurt had barely changed at all. Thinner, yes, after staying in Africa for a while, but still quite the same. Still quiet, gentle, caring Kurt.
"Why do you guys need me?" SheCat had to ask. Of anyone, why had Assassin called her specifically?
"Kurt paused a second, then choked on his words as he said them. "Rogue and Gambit have been.captured. Strobe placed her trust in you as a Plan B. Assassin called you because she knew that." He stared at her a second.
"But they're safe, right? Otherwise you would have called Scott or Jean or Logan, right?" The look in his eyes betrayed his answer before he even said it.
"Lexi made the call. I vas too weak after that long bamf, and Strobe and Aqua vere involved in something. She knew only of you, not of Jean or Scott or the others. Strobe trusts you, and made it known." His accent faintly flavored dead words. It was as if he was reciting something he had planned to say earlier, but not something he truly felt. "But Strobe didn't want you to come."
SheCat's answer was cold. Strobe had always thought this of her, never taken even a second to reconsider. "She thinks I'll die." Strobe might have been right.
They sat in silence for a few seconds, listened to the hum of the engines as Lexi piloted to Nevada. It was a soothing sound, reverberating inside their ribcages and altering the erratic beat of their hearts. They let their eyes close for a few seconds as the whirring, strumming sound moved into their mouths, noses, ears, and wrap them up. Meditation was a calming exercise.
"Will you?"
"Die, you mean?" SheCat kept her eyes closed. The longer she had her eyes closed, the longer she could be on a motorbike path among the aspens, wind twisting her hair and rain soaking her skin, collecting on her eyelashes and spilling alongside her tears. The longer she had them closed, the longer she could be anywhere but on this jet, knowing inside Remy was in danger hundreds of miles away.
"Ja. Will you?" Kurt watched her. He had not seen her for so long. She had grown up; she was no longer a girl. Strange how life changed people from innocent, naïve, happy children to broken shells of former spirit. All her love had been siphoned to everyone else, especially Gambit. There was no love left for herself, no confidence, no self-respect or reverence. She never took the time for herself, just moving from day to day, living for the sake of others. She was hollow.
"If I have to." Her eyes opened, slightly wetted. She turned to him.
He ran his fingers across her cheek, and with a pang was reminded of that time in the hallway a long time ago. Different setting, different people, same everything else. "I swear it von't come to that."
The jailors had decided that the Super-bowl had obviously gone to the Packers, and since that wasn't their favorite team, they were hard-pressed for entertainment. Bruce had been displeased by the previous session, so they decided to regain the favoritism and give an particularly brutal extra session. Both prisoners shivered in anticipation as the door opened.
"You know the drill. On your knees." As the Southern girl refused to do anything but stand, they hit Remy with the club between the shoulders, knocking him to the floor. Rogue, unwilling to be the cause of his pain, kneeled. Their captors bound her wrists and ankles, then Remy's. She staggered out of the cell as quickly as a bound person could as they prodded her in the back.
"If you weren't muties I might feel sorry for you. Too bad your 'evolutionary advantage' is useless now." One of the soldiers took the metal billy-club and slammed it into Rogue's spine. She crashed down on her stomach. He beat her again, this time against the head, and watched as she bared reddened teeth as a cut on her forehead leaked blood against the cement. The soldier raised the billy-club again.
"Get away from her!" Remy suddenly lunged, as best he could, at the club-bearing man, but fell short and only crashed to the floor at his feet. The other soldier kicked him as he struggled to get up.
"Well, well. We see a little spunk in this one. C'mon, boys, let's beat it out of him!" The two other soldiers rammed their clubs into Remy's side, forcing him to lie down. He gasped for breath. Rogue, still lying prone, was helpless to aid him. Metal struck bone and he cried out as his femur splintered. Rogue winced as the meaty thuds of the clubs striking flesh resonated in the room. Another series of blows, and the soldiers backed off a second.
Gambit lay there, keeping his teeth clenched to prevent the blood and bile from pouring out onto the floor. He could only see through one eye, and the other was hazy, swimming, unable to focus. A small rivulet of red ran down his face; his side felt like it had caved into itself. His chest moved painfully in and out with each breath. Shameful tears ran down his cheeks. He gulped. Rogue tried to move to him, but a soldier placed a foot on her back to keep her down. The initiator looked down his nose at Gambit.
"Surrender now, mutie?"
Through his tears, Remy painfully nodded his head.
"Do you know where we're going?" SheCat walked up besides Assassin in the pilot's chair of the cockpit.
"Don't doubt me, dropout. I know where we're going." Assassin watched the reflection off the face of her watch. SheCat's peeved expression at the name could easily be viewed, even without turning around. After a long an uncomfortable silence, Lexi finally felt the urge to drive the wedge home. "SheCat, eh?"
"Yeah." SheCat kept her eyes on the radar monitor, watching the sweeper move around and around, detecting nothing.
"Where'd you get a name like that?" Lexi adjusted her position to see her mental adversary better in her watch's reflection.
"That'd be none of your business now, would it?"
"Fine. Where'd you get the scars, then?" Lexi smiled privately to herself. Lexi 1, SheCat 0.
SheCat bristled. What had started out an uncomfortable dislike was rapidly heading towards full-blown loathing. "You're a sociopath, you know that?" The Japanese lady took the copilot's seat, marveling at the surprising comfort of the chair. Lexi sneered.
"So are you." Lexi adamantly kept her face to the window, piloting with ease and experience. She needed no copilot.
"Then I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." The statement was more insulting and sarcastic than genuine. Lexi turned away. SheCat had gained the last word. Lexi didn't enjoy that at all. For a second both sat in silence, one reveling in her personal victory, the other privately sulking.
"Where's Nightcrawler?" Lexi broke the silence. SheCat preferred not to look at her as she answered.
"He's in back. He feels guilty he left the other two behind, so I figure we should let him rest a bit." Assassin didn't understand why. He had done what he had to. No sense risking his life for something unnecessary. After another somewhat uncomfortable silence, Lexi turned on her comm-link.
"Assassin to Strobe, we are currently fifteen minutes away from landing."
"Why'd you leave? We need you here!" The voice went in and out of static, but the angry tone was not lost.
"Apparently I was under the impression that your friend SheCat might actually be useful to us."
Strobe's following swear words were mainly lost to static. It sounded as if she was speaking with a mouth of sand. Finally she reverted to a more civil tongue. Over the comm-link the sound of gunshots were heard.
"Assassin, I told you to always consult me before you do anything! You brought her here? I told you to keep her out of this!"
"And what? We needed a buffer! Can't you see I did what I thought best?" Lexi had acted with good intention. She could just as easily have left them there and forgotten all about them.
"Take her back now!" Strobe menacing voice was interrupted by the sound of an explosion. SheCat grabbed Assassin's comm-link.
"SheCat to Strobe, I'm not going back. You can't make me." Silence on the other end, punctuated by short spurts of static. Assassin and SheCat exchanged looks. Lexi took the comm-link back.
"Strobe? Strobe, are you there?" Silence for another few seconds, then Katy-Jo's voice broke the tension.
"SheCat, don't do this. He can take care of himself." The background din had died away. Strobe was soft and gentle.
"I have to." SheCat had taken the comm-link away from Assassin again. Lexi let SheCat speak, then scrabbled at her hands with her nails to get it back, eventually wrenching it away.
"Assassin to Strobe, we will arrive in ten minutes. What's your situation?"
"Firefight, not so bad now. We can't get in yet. We'll wait. Strobe out."
"Assassin out."
Lexi clicked off her comm-link.
Remy and Rogue lay huddled up in the corner of their cell. Rogue was anxious, and kept checking on Remy, who had not spoken in hours. They had literally thrown them back into the cell, and they both had to crawl to the trenchcoat, which had been left before the beating. Gambit had slept through the last few hours, Rogue gently checking his pulse sporadically and wiping blood off his face with a strip of her uniform.
"Oh, Remy, what'd they do to you?" His face twitched a little and he whimpered. The initial adrenalin rush was gone, and the pain came in torrents. Had it not been for Rogue's voice, he'd have likely lost his will to live. "You didn't hafta get in the way."
Softly, brokenly, as if he was holding back tears, "I know."
The sound of boots striking floor interrupted them. Rogue's head shot up, white streak flashing in the light of the hall. Remy turned his eyes upwards. The door to the cell opened.
"Oh God, not again." The soldiers filed in, just like before, and bound them, just like before. They seemed more agitated, though, and less careful in their binding. Rogue's questioning eyes met those of the soldier wrapping her wrists.
"I wouldn't want to be you, Missy." He hoisted her up to her feet and shoved her out the door, where she promptly toppled to the ground. Remy, leg broken, was unable to stand with feet bound, so Rogue aided him as they were prodded and pushed down the hall. The soldier, now behind her and out of sight, spoke again.
"Bruce is not in a good mood."
Katy-Jo and Aqua were taking a much deserved rest, kneeling behind a pine tree. The search crew after them would be there soon, and then they'd have to move again, so they savored this small moment of respite. Katy-Jo began strapping, buckling, and hitching metal bracelets to her wrists, nervously fumbling her fingers across their smooth surfaces. Catching her utility belt as it began to slip off her knees and onto the ground, Aqua gave a questioning look.
"Conductors. They'll focus my power from stun to knockout." The last metal bracelet clashed against her wrist, shimmering in the dim light of dawn. Knockout and maybe even more, she thought. She had yet to kill, or even to experiment with the full extent of her mutation. Electricity was a dangerous creation to toy with.
The low hum of the Nightingale's twin engines broke the silence. The landing, despite Assassin's practiced attempt, was still clumsy among the trees. Kurt bamfed outside to meet the two as the ramp lowered.
"Guten Morgen." His voice was more wry than welcoming. "Any new developments?"
"None. We been too busy running our butts off avoiding some uniformed mooks to try and infiltrate." Strobe disregarded any form of greeting whatsoever.
"Yeah, and pine needles are the last thing you need when wearing a Spandex suit." Aqua pulled a needle from his thigh, sighing as it left a pockmark in the black fabric.
"Yeah, well, we now have the element of surprise." SheCat walked down the ramp, preceded by Lexi. Strobe looked once more into familiar hued eyes, a recognized face framed by a ponytail and stray lock of dark hair that had never been cut. It was the last face she wanted to see right now.
Lexi broke the tension. "Well, a thanks for bringing help would be nice."
"Assassin, you hijacked the jet, made calls without my permission, picked up my friend against my command and you expect me to be happy?" Strobe rose from her knees to look Lexi in the eye. "I'm the team leader! What I say goes! And I said to take her back home!"
"I think if a team leader thinks with their heart rather than their head they will do what's worst for all of us, despite good intentions." Alexis Moore didn't even blink.
"Assassin, if I didn't need you so much I'd have canned you on the spot." Katy-Jo turned away, fuming. She didn't notice as SheCat levitated her sword, held her index fingers to her temples and concentrated, nor did she notice that the sabre was glowing white hot. She did, however, notice that some of the pine needles and broken sticks began skittering across the duff at her feet.
"SheCat, what are you doing?" Katy-Jo turned to see SheCat, palms open-faced, surrounded by a myriad collection of toothpicks, syringes, nails, pine needles and other various sharp objects. The sword cleaved the air as it returned to SheCat's hand.
"Getting ready. Now, are we gonna do this or what?" SheCat peeked her head around a tree, followed by her personal collection of random sharp items.
"SheCat." Strobe let her voice wander away. The other four watched her as they awaited her response. "Fine. Let's go."
Rogue and Gambit were shunted and shoved down the halls of the complex, moved quickly and with great haste. Because Remy couldn't walk well on a broken leg and two shattered ribs, Rogue had to help support him as they went, a task that was quickly wearing her down. It was near the end of the hall that she realized that he suddenly was light, and her wounds were healed. Quickly adjusting her position to avoid skin contact, she focused hyper-keen senses, imprinted from Logan, and tuned in to the halls alongside them.
"The dampener's down! We don't get it running again those muties could get lose!" Despite heightened hearing, the voices were still faint. "Do you know the damage they can cause?"
"Hang up.energy is coming back, sixty percent recharged.there's too much electrical interference. Some kind of electric anomaly." A calmer voice, an older one. The other one ranted and raved. This one was more of a scientist. Rogue felt obliged to grin. Good old Strobe.
"We can't wait half an hour for it to work again! The boss will have our heads!"
"We'll have to!"
"How bad is it?"
"They would currently have full access to their mutations."
"Sir!" A new voice, younger, more like that of a low-ranking recruit. "We think it will be possible to set their mutation to a less intense level if we use the generator!"
"How long?"
"Five minutes to get it going, lessens their mutation to forty percent of its original."
"Do it."
Five minutes. They had five minutes to create as much chaos as they could in the confined space and hopefully escape intact. Then, with powers nullified, it would be slaughter for them, the soldiers all having guns. She looked at Remy. Apparently he had noticed his power had returned as his eyes began to glow a vivid crimson. The slightest nod from her head, a twitch of his sparking fingers against the bindings, and mayhem unleashed itself, in all its horrible glory, inside that cement hall.
"Aqua and I'll stick together. Kurt, Assassin and SheCat, your job is finding the other two. Aqua and I'll try to reach the control room. Until then, all cyborgs consider you fair game, so be careful. On the count of three, Kurt takes me and Aqua in and returns for the other two. Ready?" Slow nods from everyone. Strobe took a deep breath in her counting. "One.two.three. Now." Kurt wrapped himself around her and Aqua, then disappeared in a cloud of purple smoke. Assassin sniffed a little as the smell of sulfur perforated the air. SheCat paid it no heed, waiting patiently until Kurt returned and gave her and Lexi what reminded her of a hug.
The jaunt itself was not as unpleasant as the landing. Kurt, trained by years of practice, never even felt the vertigo settle in. It happened to fast for most people to even notice the sudden flip-flopping of their stomachs. Still, on occasion, someone would not recover fast enough and be left nauseous or even vomiting. Since his early years of bamfing it had always been an embarrassing part of his actions that many people found the trip quite unpleasant.
They landed, however, in a sprawl. Kurt's slight miscalculation left them a foot above ground, bringing their ankles to a very hard awakening. Strobe and Aqua waited for them. Strobe whispered as quietly as she could while still being audible.
"Best of luck to you. If anything goes wrong, use the comm-links. Be careful." And with that she and Aqua disappeared into the shadows of the hall, carefully using a form of spray to high-light tripwire detectors. Kurt gave an unseen nod and started in the opposite direction, followed by the two women. He moved like a shadow, dark fur blending perfectly with the shadows. The window did not supply the sunlight to light up the room. They reached a door, Lexi sprayed something on it, and they entered once it was assured the handle was safe. Kurt's pointy-eared head peered around the door.
The room was made of cement, like everything else in the building. The sunlight came from a small window and illuminated the grey surface of the right wall. The rest was fairly dark. Lexi dared to use a flashlight across the floor.
Shining silver against the light, three metal billy-clubs rested against the wall. A few telltale spatters of blood on the ground stated that this was a room of torture. Assassin ran her hands over the stained floor.
"They were here. Both of them. There's small amounts of blood, cut leather bindings, a scrap of red uniform over here." Her trained eye caught every minute detail. "Their cell would be this door, and they recently left, by the trail of dirt and blood, from this door."
Silent nods from the rest. Kurt followed the door Lexi had indicated, and found himself in a hall of some kind. The two ladies filed out after him, and Lexi switched off her light, leaving them in an unlit, windowless room. From the darkness, a distant scream was heard.
In the manner of time it had taken the soldiers to react, all the bindings had been cut and Gambit and Rogue were creating a good deal of chaos in the hallway. The first few soldiers fell to Rogue's massive strength, and the series behind them taken out by the charged remnants of the leather bindings. Realizing that close quarters would benefit them more than long-range, the two used the walls to their advantage, Rogue using it as a weapon as she smashed heads and bodies against it, Gambit using it as cover as he used any small object he could lay his hands on to rain pain and energy upon his foes. The soldiers attempted to back off to get a good shot, but it was more than difficult in their confined surroundings.
Two minutes in, neither had tired. Gambit grabbed a dog-tag from a soldier's neck, charged until it glowed with fierce violet energy, then flung it, watching as it wreaked havoc upon on side of the hall. Rogue used her ability of flight to throw comrades onto each other, playing a crude game of human bowling. Three minutes. Gambit grabbed a soldiers gun, fired twice, then charged it and threw as hard as he could. Even broken and bloodied, he was not beaten yet. Neither was Rogue. Using her strength inherited from Carol Danvers, her feet lashed out and cracked skulls against cement. The wall itself was breaking as all manner of objects slammed into it. It was all or nothing, and neither of them held back. Four minutes.
Their sudden drop in power came so fast that Rogue nearly fell from the ceiling, slowing herself only with the remnants of Ms. Marvel's power. As she caught herself, she allowed herself as a target, if only for a second. It was a second too much. Ten guns fired almost simultaneously.
The slugs of ammunition pounded through her chest, going in neat circles and exiting horribly maimed holes. She dropped.
For Remy, it moved in incredibly slow motion. For some perverse reason, they didn't fire at him, not as he rushed to her side and lifted her from the ground, not as he felt her go limp in his arms.
Her eyes rolled up to meet his. Her mouth started to form words, but only a bubble of blood came out. Logan's healing factor would never be enough to heal this kind of damage. Again, she attempted speech.
"Remy.?" She tried to focus. She couldn't see him. Strange, how at her point of death the one thing she wanted was denied from her. Unfair, if anything.
"Rogue." It was within that one word that all the emotions that could be contained in any speech or any soliloquy were presented. He held her tight, feeling her broken body suddenly heavy in his arms. She didn't respond. Then, instinct took over, and he grabbed her and kissed.
If she could use his life force to benefit herself, it would all be worth it. If her life meant giving her all of his, he would do it. But she was not going to die here, not now, not if he could do anything to stop it. Even at forty percent of her original power, skin to skin contact would be enough to siphon all his strength off. But Remy wouldn't go unconscious first. At forty percent, he would be awake for the whole thing.
It started instantly, the second their lips touched, while she was dying but not yet dead. The first sense was overwhelming pain. Every nerve screamed and twisted in agony as his flesh met hers. Her eyes opened a second, unseen to him, glowing red and black like some visual parody of Hell. He felt the blood rising in both their mouths, touching and bubbling and spilling between the smallest crevice of their lips. His eyes closed, now going pale, at the same time as all of her conscious thought shut down.
`Oh God I'm gonna lose her. I can't hold on anymore. But the truth was, he couldn't let go. Whether by his force of will or by the activation of her powers, he couldn't let go. He couldn't even move as they collapsed, still locked, and hit the floor. He had no healing factor, his life force wouldn't be enough to sustain her. The blood started to migrate in his veins towards his lips, and for a second he felt like giggling as every pleasure center in his brain caught fire and erased logical reasoning. Then that wave passed too, and left him feeling pain yet again. Please, if you can hear my t'oughts as dey come to you.could she hear him? Did it matter what he thought anymore anyway? If it did matter, if that was what she would have of him, then he wanted it to be what he wanted to say. It was magic, chere. Just like magic. C'mon, girl, pull through. Don' die on me. You aint goin' out dis easy. If his life revitalized her, then at least he would live forever in her soul. If she died, she would become nothing more than a memory.
At that point cognizant thought became impossible as bloodlines ruptured, as arteries started to burst and veins bleed out. This was the final stand. The damage was done. Either way, whether she lived or died, his fate was sealed. Blood started to pour from his nose, his ears, his eyes --what kind of internal damage had been done to make him bleed from his eyes?--like some satanic form of tears mingling with his real ones. Skin lost color and touch died right there. He could have been stabbed and never even felt it. In almost all senses, he was already dead, and so was she. He was losing her. His last connected thought came clearly, despite all his bodily functions ceasing to exist, as his soul departed alongside hers.
I love you.
SheCat took off at a sprint, until Kurt grabbed her shoulder and restrained her.
"Nothing subtle about you, is there?" Lexi started creeping along the wall, bow and arrow ready for action. The other two followed, though Kurt kept having to hold SheCat back. Quite plainly she was nervous Remy and Rogue were in danger. And quite plainly she didn't understand why the others didn't want to run to them either. However, her habit was to throw safety to the wind, and that was not something the rest of the team was prepared to do.
"That might've been them! Why don't we go help them?!" She struggled to pass Nightcrawler again, who restrained her with his tail. After a brief try at wrenching it off from around her waist, she fell back against the wall in slight resignation, holding her sabre ready.
"Ve don't know it vas them." Kurt melded into the wall shadows. The sound of footsteps caught his attention. SheCat tried to move forward again.
"Shhh! Someone's there." Kurt held a hand over SheCat's mouth to prevent her answering. Lexi peered down the hall.
"No, Nightcrawler, not someone. Something." A stunted form was moving down the hall, followed by two others, similar to the first. The single glowing eye on each and the slight clicks of metal every time they put down their right feet gave their identity away. So these were the infamous cyborgs.
"Not for long." SheCat's voice was colder, more calculated even than Assassin's. Lifting a palm, the sword levitated, then shot like an arrow from a bow directly through the first cyborg. Before an alarm was even sounded, the second had been dispatched as well. The third was just quick enough to send out a series of sharp blips before a series of nails and medical syringes pounded straight through its torso. "I think that was the alarm!"
All three took off running, down the hall and as fast as they could. Kurt grabbed Lexi and bamfed to the end of the hall, then bamfed back to SheCat and grabbed her. His bamfing felt weaker, however, as if he was operating at less than half of his potential. Likewise, at her full extent, SheCat could have obliterated all three cyborgs simultaneously. But at forty percent, it was too late for that.
"Left! Go left!" SheCat barked an order as the came to a three-way fork. Go towards where they had heard the scream. If they found help, that was useful. If not, they'd be further wedged between a rock and a tight space.
"Well now that they know where we're headed!" Alexis sprinted at full speed left, placing a bare hand on her arrow. Her power, derived of instantaneous canceling of the electrons in an object that allowed it to phase through the first object it hit, was taking longer to activate. Frustrated, she tried another arrow, also in vain. An entire dictionary of profane words seemed to roll off her lips as she tried yet another arrow. Nothing.
In a similar fashion, the series of sharp items following SheCat dropped almost instantly, clattering with the clicks and clangs of wood and metal against the cement. The sword hovered a second longer than the rest, then crashed down too. SheCat dropped to her knees and grabbed it and a handful of toothpicks, ignoring the blood now running from her hand, and sprinted after Kurt, who was in a similar state of confusion as a puff or purple smoke left him standing in exactly the same place as he was before. Lexi turned an about face to see them.
"They've switched off our power!" Lexi waited for them at another fork, catching her breath on her tongue as she panted.
"No duh, Sherlock, now let's keep going! Straight! Go straight!" A bullet tore into the wall next to SheCat's head. A hefty amount of curses escaped her mouth as she ducked into the shadows. Kurt's fur let him meld into the shade, and he used it to his advantage as he dropped to all fours and ran headlong straight, following Assassin.
"Fork!" Lexi called out again to warn them, then gave a sharp cry as a tranquilizer ripped into her side. She twisted a bit as she fell, then twitched as she hit the floor.
"Grab her!" SheCat had adjusted to the leadership mode very quickly. Kurt grabbed Lexi. SheCat lowered her voice as much as she could while still being audible. "Go right. I'll take left. Bottom line, no matter what happens to me, get out of here and to the jet, take care of her, and call Strobe." With that, she shoved him to the right, making sure that he stayed in shadows. He turned to her as if to protest. She lifted her sword to his throat.
"Don't make me hurt you." With that, she shoulder-checked him right again and started running left, crying out as if she'd been hit. "Aaugh! My leg! I've been shot!" Kurt didn't miss the wink she gave him. He took the limp form of Lexi in his arms and started to creep down the hallway on the right, mentally figuring the easiest way out of there.
SheCat staggered a few steps, then leaned against a wall and clutched her leg as she was surrounded by armed soldiers. A few of them started speculating; she didn't look injured. She heard one in particular.
"Wait! She's not hit!"
"Too bad for you, moron." With that she sprung at them, using her skill in fencing and martial arts to plow through the first two before taking a dart to the neck. Her sword impaled one more before the dart took its paralyzing effect. Lying prone on the ground, the only intense part of her was her eyes, shining green and gold and burning the viewers with utter hatred.
"Well then, I bet you came for the other two. Funny, you don't look like a part of their team. What are they again, the X-Men? You don't look like one." The soldier standing over her looked down at her helpless body. Strange, if he could have given her a name at the moment he would have had her some type of wildcat. He could not know that he would have been invariably correct. "Do you like to lose?"
She didn't answer. He continued.
"If you let those eyes of your roam a little down the hall, you'll see what I mean." She did.
It wasn't as if her world crashed down around her ears. It was more that it ceased to exist as the world was bathed in darkness, as it went mute, as it softened out. She could have been dead had it not been for the rising and falling of her chest, still panting from the running. Anyone watching her eyes would have said that they had lost all pigment, all shine. It was as if her soul had died right then and there, at the sight of the person she loved most lying dead.
"It hurts, don't it? I had a loved one once too, until you mutie freaks took her away. You took my Loraine away." He ripped her face away from his and watched as her head cracked against the floor. He stood up and gave his orders. "Take her to a cell, give her food and water and bring her to me for her beatings. Clean up that mess down the hall, but keep the prisoners' bodies. There's more than one way to break a person."
Strobe and Aqua had reached the room past the cyborg barracks unharmed when their powers had been negated. Both took it as a hindrance, but nothing more. Strobe had the odd feeling something was amiss, something she should have done lay untouched. Nibbling her nails as she decided which door to take, she was irritating Aqua. However, he bore his annoyance silently.
"Ah, I think this door, if I remember the map correctly." Her voice, despite being no more than a whisper, echoed in the hall. At that moment her comm-link blipped.
"Nightcrawler to Strobe, Assassin and I are outside ze building. She's been hit with some kind of paralyzing dart. We're at the Nightingale now."
"And where's SheCat?" Strobe was getting nervous. She should have gone with her, tried to hold back her friend's impulses and emotional instincts.
"I don't know. She forced us to leave without her." Kurt's voice seemed a bit sad, as if he should have taken her place as decoy.
"Thank you, Nightcrawler. Strobe out."
"Nightcrawler out." Both links clicked off. Aqua gave Katy-Jo a questioning look.
"What now?" Strobe looked back at him, filled with hindsight. But the team had to persevere, no matter what. She'd gotten them into a mess, now it was her duty to get them out.
"We find the control room. We shut it down. We get back to the Nightingale. Either SheCat finds Rogue and Gambit and frees them, or she doesn't. If she does, we all go home safe. If not, we wait as long as we can. Until it's obvious if they aren't coming back."
They had thrown her in a cell. Literally, thrown her. She didn't care. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. There was no purpose to her very existence anymore.
Of course there's a purpose. She sat in the corner, rubbing and fingering her flower pendant again and again, as if it could give her solace. As if Yuriko could tell her what to do, where to go, what happened next. As if Yuriko could talk to her only daughter through the use of a mica and abalone pendant.
There were no tears shed. Tears were petty things, they were overused, they were of no significance anymore. Tears would make heartache the equivalent of murder.
She knew two things. The first, the love of her life was gone for good. The second? She didn't want to live in a world devoid of the joy she was given from his very presence.
You can die now, dear. It's okay. Pale green eyes turned to the window. The sun had risen. It burned her eyes, blinded them, even when she couldn't care less anyway. She was blind already, deaf too. Every sense had failed her, just like she had always failed the team. Bait once, now a liability. Unable to help when her loved one needed her.
Shhh, dear. It's okay now. You'll be fine. Don't think such horrible things. You got Kurt and Lexi out, didn't you? And at least that's something.
What does it really matter? Remy's dead. I couldn't help him.
It was out of your hands, dear. You can't blame yourself. Who was she talking to? Was someone talking to her? A telepath, perhaps? Someone else? Or was it all in her head?
It had always been all in her head. Any notion he had loved her back, any display she took as affection, any thought that she could actually help anyone. Yes, he might have enjoyed her presence, he might have protected her, but he always had looked after her like a daughter or sister. His real love had been for Rogue.
Rogue. Rogue had had everything SheCat had ever wanted. Rogue had always had Remy.
Come to think of it, Remy was the only thing SheCat had ever wanted.
Rogue had gotten to die in his arms, hear his last words, feel his last motion, his last thought. She'd gotten to have everything from him a pair of doomed lovers could ever need. She'd had every chance, every opportunity SheCat had never had. But SheCat had one thing Rogue didn't have.
SheCat had a chance for revenge.
That's it, dear. Just like that. You can die now.
I'm already dead.
Shhhh.
"Oh God, it was the wrong hallway." Katy-Jo had had a sudden recollection. She had gone down the way. They were one the wrong side of the complex.
"Well, things just keep going from bad to worse, don't they?" Aqua peeked around a corner to ensure that no one was lying in wait for them, realizing it was futile unless the enemy was deaf.
"Okay, we head for the other side. If we find the dampener all the better, 'cause we can blast it. I guess we're on our own." Strobe walked around the corner. Aqua followed at a more tentative pace, careful to make sure his footsteps made no noise. Strobe glared at him.
"Stop it, it's not like we could be in any worse trouble." She was impatient, snappy, and above all, putting herself and others in danger when she knew she should be doing otherwise. Aqua grabbed her arm.
"Katherine Joanne Joplen, in all my years knowing you I never knew you to be careless." Their eyes met, and their unspoken bond touched them both again. She answered, softly.
"Right. Okay, we'll try this way. And Aqua?" He let go of her arm. "Your footsteps are too loud. Be more stealthy, like this." He suppressed a smile as they continued down the hall, now almost silent.
Around five minutes later, they found the dampener, used some mismatched fighting skills to dispatch of the guards, and used a mixture of brute force and mechanical know-how to disable it. Once her power was returned, Strobe proceeded to drain all the electricity in each room unto herself and store it. She flicked a spark between her fingers as Aqua bound and gagged the unconscious guards.
"Looking up, Aqua?" She leaned casually against the wall as he used duct tape to seal a handkerchief in the mouth of a guard.
"We could've been master spies, Katy-Jo." He shot her a smile that should have been on a toothpaste ad. "Amazing how quickly our luck turned."
Her smile faded. "We still have the control room to do. And we have to find the others." Their happiness was indeed short-lived. With a sharp pang both recalled that the others were not having it so easy as them. Aqua stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder.
"You're doing fine. We'll get 'em back." Her hand clasped his. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that her plan had been perfect, that she was a good leader.
"I'm just worried, that's all." She couldn't force her eyes to meet his.
"So am I. But we'll get through this."
"Promise?" Her one moment of weakness was unseen by any but him. So long she had kept up the pretense of a fearless leader, of a perfect role model that sometimes she forgot what it was like to be wrong.
"I promise."
She took his hand from her shoulder and turned to face the hallway, letting the electricity she felt inside run through her veins. "Let's go."
Arnold Lewis had often questioned what he was doing at S.H.I.E.L.D. He'd never liked mutants, but he didn't hate them either. Many times he'd secretly fed the prisoners when his comrades were not looking. He knew, unlike his teammates, that mutants too could feel pain and love and emotion.
So why had he taken the job? Easy. It was a way to pay the rent for his three kids and wife at home.
And yet, whenever he saw something so ultimately human coming from one of his victims, he never slept. He knew he'd be re-playing the scene of the white-streaked woman's and red-eyed man's death for weeks. It would keep him every night, and he would wonder why there even was a difference between the mutants and the humans.
He had seen some of the most inhumane treatment towards the captives. The General planned on using the body of the red-eyed man to torture the new captive, the Japanese girl. Lewis was appalled. Yes, the General had his reasons, but even then, why was that girl going to be punished so, just for trying to help someone?
When he was little, his father had told him stories of the Nazis in World War II. Even the people who weren't Jewish were killed, he said, just because they felt it would be unethical not to step in and help. Lewis often wondered if he was being ethical, standing aside as people as human as he was were killed and maimed when he could step in and help them.
Unfortunately, "human" is filled with faults, and as much anger and rage as love and hope can be unleashed from the human soul. It was the last lesson Lewis ever learned.
SheCat stood alone in the room where the soldiers had tried to take her to her first torture session. The soldiers' blood wetted buck knives hovered in the air around her. Lewis, jugular cut, lay at her feet. Her pale eyes looked out the open door. The buck knives followed her.
Before anyone could even raise the alarm, they were dead. No one saw or heard her coming until it was too late for them. As more sharp objects accumulated in her aura, she walked in a kind of diabolic serenity down each hall, killing everything that moved. She slaughtered the men playing Go Fish and drinking coffee, she decimated the technicians watching Gary the Rat and Stripper Ella on the control panels.
She wasn't SheCat anymore. She wasn't Yuriko, either. She was nobody of importance.
Leaving a wake of destruction behind as she scoured the entire complex, she never felt a thing. No pain, no guilt, no anger, no grief. She couldn't feel anything at all. There was nothing left to feel. She was a berserker. She was a walking dead person.
Strange how easily one could tip the hand of fate. She had had hope, hope that Remy would someday love her, hope that someday she would do something right, hope that she would someday get over him. Now those last rays of hope had been crushed by the will of S.H.I.E.L.D., covered up by the clouds of brutality and fear. Clouds that had left their mark as pale eyes, as blood all over the floor, as a trail of destruction that followed a broken heart.
Hell hath no fury like a lover denied.
Strange how a young woman, slightly depressed, had metamorphosed into a blood-thirsty killer. She walked differently as well, with a perfected stalk instead of a slight shuffle. Her face betrayed no emotion; her actions were only to control the myriad sharp objects that followed her.
A trickle of blood ran from the mouth of a guard into his NEW DADDY mug. A technician, shock still frozen on her heavily make-upped face, would never return to the lover portrayed in her gold locket. A custodian was lying on the floor, his bare chest revealing the name STACY tattooed into his flesh, along side the thin cuts that ran in one side of his body and out the other. All were her prey. The full wrath of SheCat, daughter of Lady Deathstrike, had been unveiled.
"I think this is it." Strobe ran her hands over the panel in front of her, sensing the routes of the electricity moving throughout the entire building. "Yeah, this is it." They'd reached the control room.
"Why isn't anybody here?" Aqua checked around the panel. "Oh."
A body lay there in a puddle of blood. Aqua cringed and shrunk away from it. Strobe looked on in interest.
"Who did this?" Strobe checked around. No signs of a struggle, only the shocked face of the victim and a slit across their neck. Strobe investigated closer, wrinkling her nose at the smell of blood and the fly that currently went in and out of the victim's ear.
As if on cue, SheCat walked up into the doorway. Aqua backed up against the panel, making sure his hand was on the switch that would transfer energy to the dampener. His own power was useless for this situation. Strobe moved forward towards her friend, but stopped halfway across the room as she saw SheCat's eyes.
"Oh my God, SheCat, what happened to you? What did they do to you?" The blank face followed Strobe's action as she backed up next to Aqua. Something struggled in the back of the berserker's mind, some tie. She couldn't kill these two. They were important, in some way, somehow, they were important.
But killer instinct overrode all rational thought.
Fast as lighting her hand whipped out, and with equal speed the series of blades and shards of glass flew forward to meet their targets. Strobe screamed, but Aqua moved as fast as SheCat did, flicking the switch the instant her hand started to move. The weapons stopped a few inches short of each of their necks and fell. SheCat didn't respond.
"Oh my God." Katy-Jo was in a state of shock. She had never seen anyone this possessed, this broken. And she had an idea exactly what they had done to make her this way.
Aqua shrunk back under the glare of the woman. Her eye twitched. Aqua dared to move his hand off the dampener switch.
It was the opportunity SheCat was waiting for.
She launched herself like a rocket at him, using her own body weight as a tool to slam him against the panel and pin him there. He tried to push her off, but she had acquired some type of unholy strength. Quietly, in a perfected manner, she placed her hands on the side of his head, ready to twist for the killing blow.
For Strobe, it should have been an easy decision. A berserk killer or her lover. But it wasn't an easy decision. It was the hardest one of her life, and no matter which choice she made, she'd regret it for the rest of her mortal life.
That berserk killer had once been her friend.
"I'm sorry."
With those words, Katherine Joanne Joplen cut the dampener's energy and raised her hand.
* * *
Strobe dropped her hand. Tears began running down her face, over her perfect lower lashes and down her cheeks. The blonde hair that had previously been a luxury now fell awkwardly, amounting to even more accent her mood. She gave a small sob.
"Katy-Jo? Is she.did you.?"
"It's over." Strobe shut her eyes to all their human extent, trying to stem her crying in vain. She turned away from him.
Aqua pushed the body off him, feeling the tad of static electricity spark against his uniform. Standing up, he watched as the girl who could never be broken broke down into weeping. He walked over to comfort her.
"Katy-Jo? Katy-Jo? Let's go home." Still unable to look at him, she nodded. He took her by the shoulder and started walking out of the building. She stopped halfway out of the room.
"I don't want to be an X-Man anymore." As childish as that statement was, she meant it. She never wanted to have to use her control over electricity, to have to send friends to their death, to have to make choices like that ever again.
"C'mon, let's just go home." He started walking her away again. She complied.
The sun was at high noon when they made it outside.
SheCat was swimming in some kind of murky water, too dark to see through. There seemed to be no gravity, as she floated up and down in the darkness. She could feel her hair swirling around her face, feel the water entering her nose as she tried to breath. Struggling madly to reach some kind of surface, some slight respite from the ache in her lungs, she mentally cried out across the astral plane.
Hey! This isn't the way it was before! Again she thrashed in the water for oxygen, then slowly stopped. She was already dead. It didn't matter if she drown now or not.
What had happened? She remembered a cell, thinking to herself that she should die then and there, then the rest was hazy. Except the last scene had been, just for a second, crystal clear. Strobe softly whispering words and raising one hand while the other flicked a switch, and then blinding pain. Had Strobe killed her? Her little Strobey? Was that even possible?
From that moment on, SheCat could feel again. Every emotion that had previously been denied from her rushed in a torrent to consume her entire being. Grief, hate, fear, fury, all ran incognizant, one right after the other, beating her skull in with a type of mental breakdown that began to destroy here. She writhed and twisted, spread-eagled, fetal position, folded, any possible contortion as she screamed aloud, as if movement could acupuncture her feelings.
After a while that seemed like an eternity, she stopped, still unable to breathe in the dark liquid surrounding her. It was over. Wherever she was going now, she would go. It didn't matter to her.
A bright flash of light in the back of her eyes forced her to look upwards. There, as if a seem was splitting through black fabric, was a slit, now filled with blinding light. An arm came down to her, with gloves with half the fingers chopped off as it grabbed her wrist. For the first time in her life she felt the deepest peace anyone could feel as it pulled her up into the light.
I told you dat I'd be back soon, mon chere, an' it looks like I kept my word.
When she reached the surface, she found herself looking at a familiar smirk, familiar auburn hair that fell just over familiar eyes, a familiar laugh that she loved so much. SheCat was finally home.